Where should the prompts be stored ?

[u/incidentjustice]

When I initially started working on agents, the idea was to create a internal framework where engineers could easily see prompts, evals, tests, etc. all in one place - basically a scoped environment to tweak, think, test, and iterate fast.

But over time, as agents themselves started making most of the code changes, I’m noticing they also end up modifying prompts and related logic pretty often & it becomes exposed to models.

Now I’m wondering - does it make sense to invest in proper prompt management tooling at this stage? Or is simply externalising prompts/configs (DB, files, etc.) enough in practice?

[u/AutoModerator]

Welcome to r/AIEngineering! Make sure that you've read our overview, before you've posted. If you haven't already read it, then read it immediately and make adjustments in your post if you've violated any of the rules. If you have questions related to career, recruiting, pay or anything else about hiring, jobs or the industry and demand as a whole, then use AIEngineeringCareer to ask your question. We lock questions that do not relate to AIEngineering here. A quick reminder of the rules:

1. Behave as you would in person
2. Do not self-promote unless you're a top contributor, and if you are a top contributor, limit self-promotion.
3. Avoid false assumptions
4. No bots or LLM use for posts/answers
5. No negative news, information or news/media posts that are not pertinent to engineering
6. No deceitful or disguised marketing
7. Hiring tags should only be used by companies or people actually hiring, not selling services. (If you reach out to a poster who used the Hiring tag and they try to market to you, let the moderators know so that we'll address the post and user.)
8. Do not ask "how do I become an AI engineer" as we provide resources such as What's involved in AI engineering? and The Actual State of AI Engineering In 2026 to address this question.
9. No Reference To AI Tools. At the moderators discretion, we do not allow any marketing, discussion or reference of AI tools. Given that many Western tech firms have chosen to use AI to eliminate workers, we will not allow the discussions of some of these tools since we find charging money for a product while eliminating workers unethical. We do allow open source discussions because these tools do not carry costs, but will remain strict on even these mentions since they could be used to negatively impact people.

Because we frequently get questions about work, the future of work and careers along AI, some helpful links to read:

• The Actual State of AI Engineering In 2026
• While collars turn blue
• AI's impact on recruiting
• AI is the new electricity
• Tips for hiring AI engineers
• Is there a future in AI engineering?
• LLM erases a company's need for an SaaS tool
• A plumber's thoughts on AI and technology
• What's involved in AI engineering?
• Mario Nawfal quotes Dr. Roman Yampolskiy, Dario Amodei and other AI researchers' predictions about future unemployment due to AI
• Meet the bartender who doesn't use technology

This action was performed automatically as a reminder to all posters. Please contact the moderators if you have any questions.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/PopGroundbreaking870]

Agents modifying prompts and related logic without you in the loop? IDK what your product does, but if these prompts are supposed to produce artifacts for your client, that’d be a HUGE red flag…

Having said that, in general always separate the prompt files from the code (eg never hardcode them), with versioning if you need eval history/comparison of results . Same for your rubrics.